ESSAY
In the early 1990s, Japan was at the height of its bubble economy, convinced it stood at the center of the world. Yet at the same time, a very different reality unfolded in the United States. This is a record of that quiet contrast, seen while traveling across the West Coast.
Three Years in America
From 1990 to 1992, I spent three years photographing America. I drove across the West Coast, eventually took to the skies, and recorded towns on film. Looking back now, Japan at that time feels strangely unreal. As a nation, we genuinely believed something quite extraordinary: that Japan had reached the top of the world. It wasn’t a joke. That was the air we were breathing.
When Land Prices Defied Reality
There was a phrase often repeated back then: the total value of land in Japan was said to be twice that of the entire United States. America’s landmass is roughly 26 times larger than Japan’s, with about 2.6 times the population—meaning its population density is about one-tenth. And yet, somehow, Japan’s land was considered more valuable. Today, it sounds like an urban legend. But at the time, people said it with a straight face.
Another famous claim circulated just as widely: that the land beneath the Imperial Palace alone could buy the entire state of California. Now, it reads as a punchline. Back then, no one laughed. No one really doubted it either. There was no room for doubt. Land prices in Japan had surged far beyond any reasonable ceiling.
Japan Began Buying America
In 1989, a symbolic moment made headlines: Mitsubishi Estate acquired Rockefeller Center in New York. The news carried a tone of pride—Japan had finally obtained a piece of America’s most iconic landscape. The mindset was simple. If something could be bought, it would be bought. The world itself felt like a marketplace with price tags attached to everything.
Meanwhile, my own reality was far more modest. I stayed in a Motel 6 room that cost 20 dollars a night and ate 99-cent tacos from Taco Bell. Along the West Coast, gasoline hovered around one dollar per gallon. Discount stores were everywhere. Motels were cheap. Unemployment was in the seven-percent range. The economy didn’t feel particularly strong. If economies had body temperatures, Japan and America felt at least five degrees apart.
Japanese Companies Ruled the World
It may be hard to imagine now, but at the time, global rankings were dominated by Japanese corporations. The most valuable company in the world was Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). Alongside it were Sony, Toyota, Hitachi, Panasonic, and Canon—names that filled the top tiers. In magazines and on the news, phrases like “the 21st century will belong to Japan” were common. Very few people questioned that future.
The Otherworldly Strength of the Yen
After the Plaza Accord in 1985, the yen surged dramatically. At certain points, the exchange rate entered the 70-yen range per dollar—something that feels almost unreal today. Japan was leading the world in trade surplus, foreign reserves, and overseas asset holdings. It was not a country short on money, but one overflowing with it. That excess capital flowed into land, into stocks, and eventually into buildings across the world.
The America I Saw
Yet from within the United States, the picture looked different. At a motel office, the owner handed over a key through bulletproof glass with a friendly smile. A young attendant at a gas station shrugged when asked about the economy. “No idea,” he said with a grin. Supermarkets displayed discount signs everywhere. The common phrase was simple: “Save money.” What I saw there was not the feverish energy of Japan, but something calmer—ordinary life, continuing at its own pace.
Japan believed it could buy the world. Americans were simply living their lives. That contrast felt oddly compelling. And in the middle of it, I kept taking photographs.
The Collapse
Then came 1991. Japan’s bubble burst. Land prices were not supposed to fall. Stocks were supposed to rise forever. Japanese corporations were supposed to remain at the center of the global economy. All of it—“supposed to.” Over the next thirty years, Japan entered what would come to be called the “Lost Decades.” Meanwhile, the United States moved into the IT revolution and reclaimed its position at the center of the global economy. Fortune rankings filled once again with American companies, and average incomes climbed to more than double those of Japan.
The heat had shifted westward.
The Temperature in Photographs
My photographs do not show economic data. But they capture something else: the temperature of an era. Japan was burning. America was quiet. Yet when I look back at those images now, something unexpected stands out. The America that seemed so calm somehow looks freer—almost happier.
In the early 1990s, I stood between those two worlds. I drove west, flew above it, and captured fragments of America on film. Those three years were not defined by exchange rates, whether high or low. They were something else entirely: the final moment when Japan truly believed it was the protagonist of the world.
And I was there, photographing the other side of that story.
